On February 10, 2020, United States Attorney General William P. Barr announced the indictment[1] of four Chinese military hackers for breaking into the computer systems of the credit-reporting agency Equifax, and for stealing the sensitive personal information of nearly half of all United States citizens, and also Equifax’s intellectual property.[2]

On February 7, 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a per curiam ruling decided the 215 Members of Congress did not have standing to sue President Donald Trump over alleged violations of the U.S. Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause (Clause).[1]  The opinion reverses the district court’s decision, denying President Trump’s motion to dismiss.

On February 6, 2020, Brazil extradited Carlos García Juliá, wanted for participating in the 1977 Atocha massacre in Madrid, to Spain.  On his arrival, he was sent to the Soto del Real prison to complete his jail sentence for the five murders and four attempted homicides committed in an office of labor lawyers.[1] At the time of the assassinations García Juliá  was a member of the right-wing New Force.  In 1980, Spain convicted him for being one of the perpetrators of the massacre of three labor attorneys, a law student, and a staff member in the labor lawyers’ office of Comisiones Obreras.[2]

On November 11, 2019, Gambia instituted proceedings against Myanmar before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) claiming the maltreatment of the Rohingya community constituted genocidal acts in breach of the Genocide Convention, to which both States are parties.[1] The case focuses on the ill-treatment of the Rohingya ethnic and Muslim minority, mainly in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, by the Myanmar military and local militia, which has been described by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as a ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing.’[2]

On January 22, 2020, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) re-submitted its request pursuant to Article 19(3) of the Rome Statute for a ruling on the Court’s territorial jurisdiction in the Palestine situation. The original request was filed on December 20, 2019.[1] On that day, the Prosecutor also applied for an extension of the page limit applicable to requests submitted under Article 19(3).

On February 3, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) signed a trilateral agreement with the governments of Nigeria and Jersey to repatriate approximately $308 million of embezzled and/or stolen funds of former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha and his co-conspirators to Nigeria.[1]

On January 31, 2020, Airbus SE (the Company), a global supplier of civilian and military aircraft headquartered in France, agreed to pay penalties of more than $3.9 billion to resolve transnational corruption and other charges with authorities in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom arising out of Airbus’s scheme to use third-party business partners to bribe government officials, as well as non-governmental airline executives, worldwide and to resolve the Company’s  violation of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and its implementing regulations, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), in the United States.  The case is the largest transnational corruption resolution to date.[1]

On January 23, 2020, Bulgarian prosecutors charged three Russians in absentia for the attempted murder of a weapons manufacturer, his son, and the production manager of the company.[1] According to Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office (SGP), the three suspects tried to poison the victims internationally ‘by intoxication with an unidentified phosphorus-organic substance.”[2] The three suspects clandestinely entered Bulgaria using fake passports and used an organophosphate poison in an effort “to deliberately kill” the arms manufacturer, Emilian Gebrev, the owner of EMCO Ltd., his son Hristo Gebrev, and manager Valentin Takhchiev between April 28 and May 4, 2015.[3]

On January 23, 2020, Armengol Alfosno Cevallos Diaz (Cevallos), an Ecuadorian businessman living in Miami, Florida, pleaded guilty in connection with a $4.4 million bribery and money laundering scheme that transferred bribes to public officials of Empresa Pública de Hidrocarburos del Ecuador (PetroEcuador), the state-owned and state-controlled oil company of Ecuador.[1]

On January 15, 2020, the American Civil Liberties Union, National Immigrant Justice Center, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, and Human Rights First brought  a  lawsuit in U.S. District Court[1] challenging the Trump administration’s policies concerning Asylum Cooperation Agreement (also known as “safe third country” agreements) with Guatemala and other Northern Triangle countries that force individuals seeking asylum in the U.S. to apply for asylum in the same dangerous region from which they have fled.